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“Victory”

This chapter talked about the beginning of the war with Iraq.It talked about how after 9/11 the country was rallied around the fact that we wanted to retaliate against the people who killed so many at the Twin Towers.When President Bush used the phrase “Victory” he was able to unite the people of the United States around the idea of waging war.“Victory” was coined a famous word when it came to gaining public support for the war.The chapter talked about how the Bush Administration had a plan available to implement for managing the post-Saddam Iraq but only decided to throw it out.Rampton and Stauber say the current mess in Iraq is due in part to the marketing campaigns originally waged by the Bush Administration to sell the war to the American people.With the use of outstanding use of propaganda, Bush waged Americans into supporting the war.Even when US soldiers were preparing for deployment to Iraq they received training on how to respond to American journalists.Before the war started White House officials had hopes that Iraq’s oil wealth would help them to finance its own postwar reconstruction.As the war started to pick up speed it became noticeable that the media was showing less and less coverage of the war.Rampton and Stauber credit the reason for limited news due to the fact that conditions had gotten so bad that reporters round it hard to work over there in those conditions.

I thought that this was an interesting chapter to read because it reminded me of right after 9/11 how the country came together.It was almost as if in the heat of the moment we all just wanted to retaliate against who we thought had created terrorism on our home front.I remember the approval ratings of Bush being very high right after 9/11 because the country felt like we were going to be protecting ourselves by going to war and showing them that they can’t mess with the US.Almost 7 years later we are still fighting a war that was supposed to have ended only after two years.I think this chapter was a great example of how propaganda and the use of one word, “Victory,” can rally a country together.